Home-Ec For Grown-Ups And The Battle Against Consumerism.

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5 Things I Did For Money In September.

I know I mention my work a bit here and there, and I do think that stay at home partners should try and boost their incomes. So to give a clearer picture of how I make my money, where it all comes from and how little you need to get started on most of it, here’s September’s breakdown:

1: I wrote four ebooks on demand.

The task: 4x 5-20k ebooks for different clients.

Time involved: around four hours average per book, not counting uninvolved time.

Payment: $50 per book, total $200.

The ease: I find writing comes easily to me and most books are simple to write.

The difficulties: Dealing with new buyers and weird specifications, on top of deadlines, can be too much.

2: I tutored ten students.

The task: 10 students needing on average 5h of tuition over the month plus homework.

Time involved: fifty hours active tutoring, around five planning and working on homework.

Payment: £10-25 per hour, total £700.

The ease: For me tutoring is entirely easy now I have the luxury of declining student’s I’m not perfectly suited for.

The difficulties: You need a skill to start with, and from there you need to cope with many awkward students before you can afford to focus on the good ones.

3: I reviewed fifty products, services and ebooks.

The task: 50 genuine reviews of real products.

Time involved: 8min trial time, 1min review time average. Total 7.5 hours.

Payment: $4 per review, total $200, plus freebies.

The ease: Very easy and most of the things I review (pet products, books, medical supplies) are things I want anyway.

The difficulties: You need to find people willing to pay for a review and know on which sites it’s legal and on which it isn’t.

4: I proofread five books and various documents.

The task: proofread various texts and documents for clients.

Time involved: about ten hours total.

Payment: $200 total.

The ease: Anyone could do it as long as you speak the language and aren’t dyslexic.

The difficulties: Reasonably hard, actually. You need to be fully focused in order to alter spelling, grammar and reading ease of the text.

5: I recorded ten video reviews and messages.

The task: 10 videos for various clients showing off their products or delivering a message.

Time involved: around 5min prep time plus the video length, totaling around 2h total.

Payment: £10 per video, total £100, plus, freebies again.

The ease: The easy part is doing the actual video.

The difficulties: The hard part is getting the work and getting it ready. 10 videos a month isn’t exactly an income on its own.

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Total hours invested: 90h 30min.

Hours per week: 22h 30min. (56% of full time hours.)

Total earnings: £1100. (100% of minimum wage, 50% of national average.)

Earnings per week: £275.

Earnings per hour: £12.15.

So basically by being smart with what I do, investing more hours in my high-payers and cash-in-hand money and working entirely from home, I can bring in a full-time minimum wage salary and still have 17.5 standard working hours left to keep the house in order, blog, train our puppy, write my own books and unwind.

Go for it! There is an endless stream of writers who want their works proofed and entrepreneurs who want a couple of dozen ghostwriters on the books at all times. The limit is how much you can/want to write. ^^

Your friend is where I’d like to be in 5-10 years. He is an admirable man.

Hopefully some day I’ll be in a similar place, with a more central classroom and a few “underlings” who I’ve checked to make sure they are excellent tutors in their own specialism. ^_^ It’s going to be hard, having plans for so many kids, but hence why I’m giving myself so much time to work on it.

I used to be in a wealthier area for tutoring, but it would have been impossible to build a life there. Too urban and busy and near the city. I prefer living a bit out of the way. Hence why I’ll need a separate location for my tutoring when I expand. 🙂